Tim Challies Blog Tour, Day 5

Tim,

Thank you for joining us on Genderblog to answer a critical discernment question.  It is not an uncommon experience reported by female pastors today that they believe they have received an actual call from God to become a pastor.  Here are two recent examples from the newspaper:

• Jacci is not a rebel. She didn't want to break new ground for those "crazy feminists." She only wanted to follow God's leading. After much study and soul-searching, Jacci's thoughts became clear during a college trip to the Holy Land. "It was a call," she stated. "It was quite amazing. I turned to a friend and said - I think God is calling me to be a minister. I was waiting for God to strike me dead. It was a huge shift in my thinking. That was not in the realm of possibility for my life the way I had grown up and had been taught."
• There was no writing in the sky, no voice from heaven.  "I would have loved that," said the Reverend Keri, "but that doesn't happen.  At least, it didn't happen to me."  Nevertheless a bolt of some sort caused Pastor Keri to suddenly quit her job and go to seminary.  She is now the new shepherdess of a 266 member church..

How would you help a woman discern whether or not  she is receiving an actual "call from God" to become a church pastor?

As you indicate, this is a timely question and one I was faced with even during the process of completing the book when I was contacted by female pastors who were interested in the subject matter. And just recently there was a very popular book on the New York Times list of bestsellers which was the memoir of a woman who, following her husband's death, decided to fulfill his dream and become a pastor. There are many women today who feel they are being called by God into vocational, pastoral ministry.

Time would fail me to really examine the concept of "calling" and how God calls a person to the ministry. In brief, though, I think it is important that we understand what a call truly is. A call to ministry has to be more than an internal restlessness or desire or pull to be a minister. We are accustomed to understanding a call to ministry as being a call from God, that He somehow communicates to a person that it is His will for that person to be a pastor. And certainly God can burden a person for ministry. But I think we do better if we see a call to ministry as being a call from the local church and a call to service.

In The Discipline of Spiritual Discernment I say that the local church is the best and most natural context for the exercise of discernment. The local church serves as the body which will confirm or refute a person's call to ministry. Hence it is the local church which is responsible to search the Scriptures and then to examine a person's life and credentials to see if that person truly is suited for ministry. I am convicted from a plain reading of Scripture that women are not permitted to serve as pastors. Therefore the local church would exercise discernment by telling her that she may not be a pastor. The church would not extend or confirm that call to ministry. Without the local church there is no call to pastoral ministry.

There will often be times that we feel we are to do certain things. And many people believe that discernment itself is really a feeling, that it is something to do more with the heart than with the head. Unless we firmly root discernment in the realm of reason and the realm of skill, it will be easy to permit all kinds of things that do not accord with Scripture. But when we understand that discernment refers to our ability to understand and to obey Scripture, we will see that it is a skill and it is something that requires hard work and sometimes difficult decisions. Our task as men and women of discernment is to search the Scriptures to understand what God says so that we might do what God demands (and avoid doing what God forbids). A faithful reading of the Bible will show that women are not to serve as pastors. There is a whole world of ministry available to them, but the position of spiritual authority and leadership has, since the time of creation, been given only to men.

So my advice to a woman who felt a call to pastor a church would be to encourage her to speak to the leaders of a gospel-centered, church. Within that context she would have the joy of pursuing ministry, but ministry within the context of the local church, within the gifting and passions God has given her, and within the boundaries God has decreed.